Zach Bryan Says He Prefers Kanye Over Taylor Swift, Then Apologizes

Zach Bryan has disappeared from X (formerly Twitter), at least for now, after causing a stir with a tweet in which he expressed his preference for Kanye West over Taylor Swift — a tweet for which he later apologized, saying he was drunk at the time.

Sometimes the famous singer-songwriter's tweets cross the line between playful and downright provocative, and Tuesday night's Ye/Swift tweet was clearly designed to piss people off, no matter how lighthearted it may have been.

The original tweet initially offered a mild insult to Swift's boyfriend Travis Kelce's football team — “Eagles > Chiefs” — and then followed it with “Kanye > Taylor… who's with me.”

Between Swift’s status as the world’s most popular female singer and Ye’s status as the music industry’s most virulent anti-Semite, Bryan surely knew he would get a backlash, and he got one. On Wednesday, he deactivated his account, but not before offering an apology before disappearing from the platform.

“Guys, I love Taylor,” Brian claimed in his next tweet. He said he was “listening to TTPD [‘The Tortured Poets Department’] “Last night, ‘Thank You Aimee’ came out and I drunkenly tweeted about Kanye. If anyone takes this seriously, please know that I love both artists very much and think we are in a really beautiful time in music.”

Swift's song, which Bryan referenced, was widely seen as an insult to Kim Kardashian, a belated response to the reality TV star's public accusations against Swift in 2017, in defense of West, her then-husband.

Despite his exit from X, Brian never deactivated his Instagram account. There, he left evidence that his listening habits were more consumed by Ye than Swift, despite announcing on the other platform that he was listening to “Tortured Poets.” In his Story, Brian posted screenshots of three West songs he was apparently replaying and enjoying on Spotify, including “I Thought About Killing Somebody.”

At the time of this writing, Brian X's page says “this account does not exist,” though anyone who deactivates an account on the site has the opportunity to reactivate it within 30 days, and most fans assume the volatile singer will return.

Brian might not be lying about liking Swift’s music either, even if she came in on the wrong end of Ye’s equation in his unsolicited comparison. He has posted about Swift in a more positive light in the past. In late 2022, when her album “Midnights” was released, he tweeted, “Miss Swift, what’s the vibe at midnight, good morning everyone and a happy almost weekend, come on in, we’re gonna cry.” When a fan asked him what his favorite Swift song was, he said, “‘August’ for sure.”

Earlier in the week, Bryan sparked some controversy on X when he suggested that artists should avoid taking political stances, as Swift did when she endorsed Kamala Harris for president. “Anyone who wants to put politics over music doesn’t understand the point of listening to music,” Bryan wrote on Twitter. Several users responded by posting screenshots of classic protest songs by Bob Dylan and others.

West, Bryan's chosen artist, is likely to be apolitical, having frequently expressed his support for Donald Trump and the MAGA movement before and after his own run for president.

Bryan and Swift are sharing a spot in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart again this week, with “The Tortured Poets Department” at No. 5 after 21 weeks and Bryan’s “The Great American Bar Scene” at No. 7 after 11 weeks. Meanwhile, Ye’s latest work isn’t exactly pretty, so perhaps he could use Bryan’s moral support. “Vultures 2,” the hip-hop star’s latest collaboration with Ty Dolla Sign, dropped out of the Billboard 200 entirely, after six weeks.